this happened a while ago but i still think the fandom's reaction to asagiri saying that soukoku just hate each other and further interrogating their feelings for each other would go into the realm of transformative fanwork was funny. everyone was so up in arms about him saying they hated each other as though dazai and chuuya don't make a point of telling everybody and each other AND themselves that they hate each others guts every time they're near each other. idk why skk shippers want to pretend that hating each other is not very much a part of the skk dynamic. like, hot take, but i think they do quite sincerely hate each other, but that doesn't mean it's a straightforward or normal kind of hate. obviously it's a very homoerotic and very often homoromantic brand of hatred (ahem, dead apple), but no matter how much you want them to kiss or bump uglies or live a domestic life with a picket fence and 2.5 children, the fact of the matter is that dazai and chuuya quite wholeheartedly believe they hate each other (insert a soundbite of what is this feeling from wicked here).
the full quote is "Dazai hates Chuuya. Simply put. Just as it appears. I don't do the whole 'but actually...?' thing. That would be stepping on the territory of fan creations. [...] Chuuya also thinks he hates Dazai. He just hates him! There's no saying 'but do I really?' after saying 'I hate him!' He simply hates him." (source: @arierv77 on twitter)
what i think is interesting is the "chuuya also thinks he hates dazai" line. now, of course, there's a possibility that this is not a 100% accurate translation and i'm reading into something that isn't there, but i do think that 'think' is a key word to dazai and chuuya's hatred for each other. they think they hate each other. not only do they think they hate each other but they believe it too and this is something that both of them (and asagiri!) refuses to challenge or reconsider. i think that that hatred is important to their relationship, actually, especially on dazai's side of it.
because when you look back at fifteen, both the anime and the light novel (have yet to read the manga orz), pre-chuuya dazai is quite... empty. he's dispassionate and disinterested. there's a very different flavor to the way he speaks about suicide in the very beginning of 15 vs how he speaks of it in dark era or the main story. i would argue (and i could make a whole separate post on this) that in 15, when dazai agrees to help mori in exchange for something that will help him die easily, it is perhaps the only time we see dazai seriously attempt suicide. now i am not saying he is not suicidal because the entire culmination of dark era and oda's final words to dazai hinge on his understanding that dazai quite truly does want to die, but after 15, almost whenever dazai talks about suicide, he's making a joke of it. the times we seriously see his desire for death are in moments like the "wake me from this oxidizing world of a dream" scene in dark era where he is longing for death but is not actively attempting suicide. it's a reasonable assumption, based on textual evidence, that dazai stops seriously pursuing suicide. in other words, that dazai is no longer as committed to death as he was at the beginning of fifteen, even though he still does want to die.
what changed? well, chuuya, obviously. we don't get much of a look at dazai before he met chuuya, but what we've seen is someone empty and uncaring, someone who finds life entirely pointless and not worth it. he doesn't care about anyone, but he doesn't dislike anyone either. but then, almost immediately after meeting, he's bickering with chuuya and he's returning chuuya's anger with anger of his own. he's trying to rile him up, he's getting riled up by him. he becomes mischievous and annoying and he has fun causing problems for chuuya and he has a reaction to the way the sheep treat chuuya. in stormbringer, he says something along the lines of "i want to see chuuya suffer as a human being" and is the only one who has ironclad faith in chuuya's humanity. it seems to me that the logical reason why dazai believes this is because, to dazai, there is no possible way that chuuya could not be human, because chuuya is the one who dragged dazai into his own humanity. he made dazai feel things and want to be a part of the world and he made him want to find something to live for (as explicitly stated in the rimbaud/old mafia boss fight).
in short, chuuya made dazai want to live. and dazai hates him for that. chuuya is irreplaceable to him, but dazai cannot allow him to occupy any place of importance other than that of the person he hates the most, because dazai understands very clearly that to love something is to open yourself up to losing it. and, well, i don't think that dazai wants to want to live. it's a lot easier to just give up and give in and let death take you. life is painful, and dazai hates pain, but he's stuck with life now and it's not solely chuuya's fault (oda and the ada are very much factors), but it did begin with chuuya. it's like hating someone who wakes you up on a day when you really had to wake up, but all you wanted to do was keep sleeping. for dazai, to consider that his feelings for chuuya are anything other than hatred would be tantamount to deciding decisively that he does not want to die, and dazai cannot do that. he might not be seeking death actively these days, but that does not mean he wants it less.
chuuya's hatred for dazai doesn't quite have as many layers of complexity to it. in fact, i think it's relatively straightforward. he knows that dazai is important to him, irreplaceable, even, but dazai also pisses him off. dazai's impossible to be around, and dazai also has a habit of taking chuuya's sincerity and twisting it to suit his needs. chuuya, though mafia, and though he has a braggadocio attitude, is a pretty sincere guy. guess there's a reason (other than being a freak) that dazai made a whole thing about chuuya being his dog. obviously, dazai likes jerking chuuya around and playing tricks on him, but on top of that, whenever chuuya expresses genuine concern or worry for dazai or thinks that they're having a sincere interaction, dazai always has a "gotcha" and is tricking chuuya or being insincere. dazai pisses chuuya off enough that chuuya's always reacting to the idea of dazai and knows that there's very little point in feeling anything but hatred for him, because if chuuya attempted to be his friend or care for him, dazai would without a doubt take advantage of that. i think it's highly plausible that if dazai were to be more sincere and would not treat chuuya's feelings as a joke, chuuya may stop hating dazai, although i think he will be annoyed with him from now until eternity. like if they ever got together they're still going to be recreationally attempting to murder each other. it's their idea of a fun date night. it's foreplay for them.
asagiri's quote is honestly hilarious because he's saying that to consider the dazai-chuuya relationship beyond hatred would be to go into the realm of fanworks which is like, the funniest and most roundabout accidental (?) endorsement of a ship. "yeah if i consider that maybe there's something else besides hatred there i'll slip and start writing fanfic" like ok asagiri. sure. he very much leaves the door open for us shippers with that statement because the obvious implication is that if they ever did consider their feelings beyond hatred, something romantic would likely happen. that's extrapolating and is not exactly what he said, of course, but we all know what he's talking about when he talks about fanwork (especially with recent statements about hoshikawa being a shipper so he sees ship art on his tl at times he knows exactly what kind of fanwork this would be)
this got far longer than i anticipated but tldr soukoku do in fact hate each other. there's a lot of significance in them hating each other and "soukoku hate each other" is, imo, in support of them as a ship more than it is against them as a ship. especially when it's asagiri saying it.
